Thursday, 18 November 2010

Thames Water “flusher” Danny Brackley has launched a blog documenting the thrills, spills - and celebrities - he encounters in the bowels of London.

While Londoners go about their business above ground, the 25-year-old trunk sewer inspector and author of The Sewerman’s Log roams the capital’s network of Victorian drains.

He and his 39-strong band of “flusher brothers” clear blockages to keep things running smoothly. The occasional rat has to be contended with, as do vast build-ups of putrid fat, or ‘fatbergs’ – the flushers’ arch-enemy in their ongoing ‘Bin it - don’t block it’ campaign.

Fat is wrongly washed down customers’ sinks and when it hits the sewers it cools, sets hard and forms nasty blockages which Danny and his mates have to remove, sometimes by hand.

But as well as poo, fat and other hideous unmentionables, there is a a strange creature that Danny keeps bumping into in the filth-filled drains of London – the celebrity.

In the last week alone Danny has been in the drains with One Show presenters Alex Jones, Chris Evans and Jason Manford, as well as Capital Radio host Johnny Vaughan and actor Neil Morrissey.

Danny said: “I’ve started this blog because I want people to know what goes on in the murky but fascinating world below London.

“The Sewerman’s Log will leave no stool unturned. I will reveal all about the grot and the grime as well as the big names who grace our historic sewers, designed in the 1800s by our ‘sewer god’ Sir Joseph Bazalgette.